Re: Classifying Science: A Government Proposal...1982 Bobby R. Inman [comment from Peter Freyd]

[Mark Liberman <myl () sansom ling upenn edu>]

> I trust that everybody at Penn is aware that Penn has a specific
> policy forbidding research contracts for anything but publishable
> research. The policy allows a delay in publication (for patent
> purposes) but not prohibition. The delay, as I recall, can not be more
> than two years.


About seven years ago, we hired a fresh PhD from Cambridge University
as a postdoc at Bell Labs. He was blocked from distributing copies of
his dissertation by British Telecom, which had provided funding for
his fellowship. The dissertation was duly deposited in the library at
Cambridge, and could be read there by anyone who wished to make the
trip, but he was enjoined (by a very threatening lawyer-letter) from
giving or showing any copies to anyone, or otherwise divulging the
contents.


I found this strikingly at odds with what I understood the concept of
a PhD dissertation to be, and inquired among various American academic
colleagues. Everyone agreed that such an arrangement would never be
tolerated at a respectable American university.  I believe that
Cambridge was also somewhat concerned (I gather that they may not have
scrutinized the agreement with BT very carefully when it was
instituted), and afterwards instituted an arrangement rather like
Penn's, where a modest but fixed delay for patent purposes was
permitted.


Would Penn's policies ever have permitted a classified PhD dissertation?
Or one that could not be distributed because it was the intellectual
proprty of some company providing the fellowship money?






         Mark Liberman                 myl () unagi cis upenn edu


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